Recently I’ve been struggling a lot with maintaining my self-control and self-discipline. Normally I’m a pretty responsible and committed individual — I make myself strict to-do lists everyday and am adamant about checking them all off, I always pay my bills on-time, and I’m dutiful about making sure my blog posts go up on-schedule. But this week, I’ve been in a serious funk. Case in point: this is not at all the post I was intending to write, but it was the only thing I could will myself to write when I needed to write it.

To finish off the Learning Marketing series, I thought it would be beneficial to provide a roundup of a few of my favorite articles related to marketing, social media, and content creation. These are posts that I’ve saved to Pocket for future reference because I think they’re good examples of evergreen content that can be reread for continued impact.

Oscar season has reignited my love for watching movies. Usually I’m more likely to binge watch a bunch of TV episodes rather than sit down and watch a whole movie, but my list of movies to watch has been growing recently so I thought I’d share it with you guys. These are the movies on my to-watch list this month:

Happy leap day and happy last day of February! It’s the end of another month, which means it’s time for another roundup. In case you missed my first ever roundup, the format I like to follow is my favorite Instagram feed, Twitter handle, article/blog post, blogger, and Youtuber from the past month. Just consider it my way of introducing you, my beautiful readers whom I appreciate very much, to more awesome content and content creators.

The idea of a “personal brand” is one of those hot topics that content makers can’t seem to get enough of lately. A month or so ago, I was determined to define and secure my personal brand so that I could better sell myself and my skills to potential employers. In other words, I was going to craft the ultimate sales pitch. Now a month or so later, I’m here to report the five main lessons I learned about the evolution of my personal brand.

Guys I don’t know what to tell you about my musical tastes this month. Despite all the new music that came out, I found myself gravitating toward old favorites or single tracks from movie scores. Thus, this playlist is very random. But I’ll do my best to recommend you to further listening in a “if you like this, then you’ll like that,” format.

If you read my last post on how to plan for a trip you may be noticing a travel trend here. And that’s because this Saturday I’ll be embarking on the Disney Fantasy for a 7-night Western Caribbean Cruise with the Star Wars Day At Sea! Needless to say, I am very excited. This will be my twelfth Disney Cruise with my family (we’re big fans). I went on my first Disney Cruise when I was 6 years old, and now that I’m 22 and still going Disney strong, I’ve learned a few things about how to make the best of my Disney Cruise experience. There are a plethora of articles on the internet about how to prep and plan for a Disney cruise, so with this article I’m going to take a minimalist approach. Today I’m going to share with you my top five Disney Cruise on-board essentials.

Preparation and planning for one’s vacation tends to be very divisive: some people love it, some people hate it. Because I’m in the camp that loves it, today I’ll be sharing with you my three step process for planning your best trip ever. To keep things simple, this is my process for planning a trip after I’ve already selected my destination and planned my transportation (aka bought my plane ticket). If you guys want to see my process for picking a place and scheduling flights, let me know in the comments below.

The Twitter-sphere has been a-Twitter with a lot of news lately about changes coming to Twitter’s news feed algorithm in the future. But that’s not what this post is about, and I want to get that elephant out of the room right here and right now. In this third episode of Learning Marketing, I want to (hopefully) introduce you to some new Twitter handles – handles that I find especially useful in keeping up with marketing and public relations trends.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a bit of a news junkie. I love love love keeping up with the news and I’m always game to try out different news apps and aggregators or experiment with RSS readers. Despite my best efforts though, I still feel as if I’m not doing enough to stay on top of absolutely every breaking news story. I’m one of those people that get anxious knowing that my news feeds are getting longer and longer if I’m not actively reading and managing them.

For those of you who haven’t heard of Lynda.com (and I hadn’t either until a month ago), welcome to your new resource of learning and furthering your education outside of formal schooling. As I mentioned in the previous episode of Learning Marketing, I have been pursuing self-taught marketing and public relations skills and practices to further my career. This particular website was recommended to me by the same hiring manager who taught me a valuable lesson about learning from failure (link). And in case you were wondering, this post is not sponsored.

I have something to confess. Despite what I may have lead you to believe, this is not my first attempt at blogging or managing a website. A couple months back, I started a blog quite different from this one. I posted a few times a week about different activities you could do based on stimulating your senses; a sort of food and wine pairing but with all five senses. For example, one of my first posts was inspired by Paris: I paired watching Amelie with a candle called “French Daydream” and ate bread and cheese with champagne.

Here’s what my life has been looking like lately: I wake up, send and respond to job search emails, maybe write a blog post or two, then research the hell out of marketing and public relations practices until my eyes and brain are no longer in sync. Although I have had some experience in these areas (pr and marketing), I know that if I want to pursue this as my career I have a lot of catching up to do since I didn’t actually study any of this in school.

As I’ve mentioned before, music is a big part of my life. My musical tastes and favorites have varied wildly over the years, and my preferences and current listens change frequently based on my mood, state of mind, or geographical location. Although the month isn’t over yet, here’s a look into what my month has looked like musically.

I do love me a good roundup, so pardon me while I do my best to emulate those whom I admire. In contrast to the many roundups that aggregate various posts from across the web for your viewing pleasure (which I love), to strike out on my own path my roundups will consist of my favorite Instagram user, Twitter handle, news article, blogger, and Youtuber (or perhaps a single video) from the past week.

I do not know what life was like before I had an iPhone. My phone is my life partner; my refuge, my everyday assistant, my connection to humanity. While I think I love almost all aspects of my phone, there are a few apps and functions that I have especially been loving lately.

I’ve never considered myself one who easily makes friends. I find myself with friends, but I’m unable to trace the genesis of our friendship — how we met, who initiated what, how we reached the point we’re at today. Since I’m naturally introverted and don’t often strike up conversations with strangers I can only assume that all my friends reached out to me (although this seems unlikely based on some of their similarly introverted personalities).

Lately I have been loving me some film scores. Music is important to me in general, but when watching a film I think the score is especially important in setting the scene, mood, and tone of a movie. I could pick specific tracks of each of these soundtracks, but for now here is a compendium of the scores I’ve been listening to lately.

One very important thing to know about me is that I love to read. I need to read. I have an unrealistically long list of books to read and only a short life in which to read them all. And thus I am most often reading new books rather than rereading old favorites (although I do have exceptions to this rule, i.e. the Harry Potter series or Pride and Prejudice).

All my life I have wanted to be really excellent at just one thing. When I was five I wanted to be a professional ballerina without ever having taken a ballet lesson. When I was six I wanted to be a professional gymnast after watching the Olympics. I aimed high and I dreamed big; I was uninhibited by the self-imposed limits that all too easily dampen one’s dreams as an adult.